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Causation in Medicine: The Disease Entity Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Caroline Whitbeck
Caroline Whitbeck*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Abstract

This paper examines the way in which causal relations are understood in the dominant model in contemporary medicine. It argues that the causal relation is not definable in terms of the condition relation, but that in general for conditions of an occurrence to be among its causes they must answer instrumental interests in a certain way, and there are further criteria for distinguishing ‘the’ cause of a disease (i.e., its etiological agent) from other causal factors, which are based upon instrumental interests peculiar to medicine. It also argues that diseases are complex processes of which both clinical and underlying patho-physiological manifestations are proper parts (as contrasted with effects).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 619 - 637
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank Professors Sandra Harding, Robert Creegan, Robert Howell and Steven Davis for useful criticisms of earlier versions of this paper, and to Professor Robert Garvin for several lengthy discussions on this topic.

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